One thing I always admired about certain Dredd artists was the consistency of their world-building; Ron Smith, for example, was pretty good at working out fixed designs for things like H-Wagons and then sticking to them.

So when I saw a sniper team mentioned in the script for Lowlife: Creation part 6, I thought it would be great excuse to dig out the Judge-Sniper design I came up with for my first ever Dredd story (Judge Dredd: Master Moves, Megazine 217, April 2004). Unfortunately for me, I did that design in a fever of enthusiasm at getting to work on Dredd, as an answer to something that had always bothered me as a reader of 2000AD: if Judge Dredd's uniform is covered in eagles, and his bike has a dirty great eagle on it, why then do all the ancilliary Judges (teks, med-teks, forensic guys etc) always have plainer uniforms without eagles on them?

Blindingly Obvious Answer: drawing the eagles is a pain in the arse. Any sane artist will never draw more eagles than he has to.

And that's fine except... when it came to it, I really did want to do something special for my first Dredd, so I ended up with a design the had eagles on both shoulders (I also did a Sector House Chief with double eagles in the same episode). And given that I only had to draw the sniper a couple of times, that was fine.

So six years later, I dig the old design out, and somehow I can't make myself let go of the whole double-eagle thing, even though this time round I've got crowds of the buggers to draw. I must be mad.

"if Judge Dredd's uniform is covered in eagles, and his bike has a dirty great eagle on it, why then do all the ancilliary Judges (teks, med-teks, forensic guys etc) always have plainer uniforms without eagles on them?"

I've assumed it is because street Judges are out and about (as I says on the tin in fact) and the eagle is a symbol used to stamp their authority on the people. The more specialist/backroom Judges tend not to get into the field except to attend crime scenes and so they tend not to be in the public gaze as much so often go for the unadorned pads and a big badge with the division written on it. That said the eagle might be handed out when you pass specialised street Judge training (there must be a point where cadets pick a speciality, possibly as they move on to rookie status and get the eagle but only half a badge, as they'd then be doing supervised street work), the double eagle might then suggest they have had even more training (like the difference between an ordinary policeman and those in armed response - although knowing one of the latter with more than his fair share of "we thought we'd got away with it and then a cow in the next field fell over" stories I am not so sure ;) ). It'd be interesting to pull out examples of the uniforms used by the different divisions as I'm sure there are recurring patterns and plenty of differences - I'm sure I've seen quite differing designs for the SJS, for example. Might be something worth crowdsourcing...

Ben Willsher's recent Dredd story had both a sniper and some forensics judges - we seem to have had a good outing for Judge snipers recently. I can't remember earlier ones before yours (which was Meg #217 by the way ;) ) but can't think I was keeping an eye out for them - I was skimming through some back issues and noticed a Judge Hart with a sniper's rifle but in the regular Judge's uniform (Meg 2.11), so it is unclear if she was a specialist or not.